Pavazhamalli rasam [parijaat flower rasam]

I’ve written once before about the parijaat flower, Nyctanthes arbor-tristis, night blooming jasmine, shiuli phool (Bangla), xewli (Axomiya), or the pavazha malli, pearl jasmine, as it’s known in Tamil. At the time, I was enticed by the honey-like fragrance of the flower, which I was attempting to capture in a naturally-yellow-colored drink. I pulled color from the flower’s distinctive little orange stems as Buddhist monks might once have: “poor man’s saffron,” this flower is sometimes called.

This time, it’s the bitterness of the plant and its flowers that draws. This is a quality already recognized, both culturally and medically. Just about all the myth and legend associated with the plant is bittersweet. The flower emerges from the churning of the ocean alongside immortal nectars, is coveted by Indra and stolen by Krishna–and cursed thus to bear flowers but never any fruit. Krishna’s wives fight over the plant, so he plants it in Satyabama’s house, allowing the flowers to fall in Rukmini’s, pleasing perhaps both and neither. Parijaat, the flower herself, loves the sun, but is unable to bear his harsh rays, so she angers her beloved; the flowers bloom at night and drop at dawn.

In Bengal, Tagore aches to remember his mother and finds her in the scents of temples and shiuli. In Assam, Bhupen Hazarika imagines the falling flowers being set free of their pain, and Jyotish Bhattacharjee asks what becomes of picking xewli–it’s a moment of fond farewell. For us as children being called indoors at the time when the parijaat would release its fragrance meant that we left our longings outdoors, and just got on with mundane evenings. The pavazhamalli is like that, always a story of something lost or never quite had.

Medical uses are of course more straightforward. Kashayams or brews (infusions, decoctions) to treat fevers, pneumonia, and sciatic pains or body stiffnesses are common; the plant’s properties are anti-inflammatory. Chewing the bark is like using an expectorant. The seeds can be dried, powdered, heated in sesame oil and used in hair care (“kaai choornam”). In Ayurvedic terms, leaves are said to address pitta imbalances; pavazhamalli leaves, seeds, flowers, and bark are among the more significant culinary “bitters,” not unlike neem.

It’s this last insight, in addition to the widespread use of the dried flowers in Assamese cuisine, that have generated the present recipe. If we can make such brilliant rasams with veppam poo or dried neem flowers, then why not pavazhamalli flowers?

As with most things I do, it’s a process and can’t be made on a whim. Flowers have to be collected daily, early morning, before the dogs have run all over them or it’s rained and the delicate fallen blossoms are destroyed. Whatever small handfuls get collected have to be washed gently and dried–and the drying shrivels them, of course, so it takes a few collections to get enough dried flowers for a single rasam batch.

Once you have that, though, the process is simple. And immensely rewarding.

There are a few different ways to make veppampoo rasam, all of them fairly minimal: the point is to highlight the taste of the flowers themselves. I adopted a similar approach with pavazhamalli flowers. I went further, purist almost, leaving out anything additional that might overwhelm the essential and subtle flower bitters. (That means no tomatoes either, for those out there inclined to add tomatoes to all possible rasams!). And although I have in the past always seasoned my rasams with the usual mustard seed-jeera-red chilli-curry leaves combination, I skipped that completely this time around. The seasoning was simply dried pavazhamalli flowers, fried in ghee.

The ideal diet, says Suśruta—the “well-heard” one from the region we know today as Bihar, son of Vishwamitra, main author of the 6th c. BCE medical and surgical treatise Suśruta Samhita—is comprised of six rasas, which are the definitive guide to the nourishment of the body: in Tamil, uvarppu (salty), inippu (sweet), kasappu (bitter), pulippu (sour), kaarppu (pungent) and thuvarpu (astringence, sort-of). The 6 rasas work through diets to determine the strength, immunity, complexion and physical health of a living system.

A typical rasam will deliver some of these 6 tastes in multiple ways (sour is tamarind and tomatoes, which are also sweet but then we add jaggery… etc.). I tried in this version just to deliver each taste once, though the rasa podi addition might well have complicated that objective, so many spices does it contain.

In sum, this rasam is distinguished by the fact that it makes use of roasted toor dal instead of the usual cooked dal (so none of the usual frothing drama, only simmering), fried pavazhamalli as seasoning, and no-tomatoes, no-curry leaves. For just a brief moment, when the fried flowers were being poured on as seasoning, the kitchen became the night, full of fragrance, as when the tree out front is in full bloom. And then gone, shy as the flower itself.

Here are two veppampoo rasam recipes I’ve loved, and used in the past: Agrahara recipes & Rakesh Raghunathan’s “Ammavum Naanum” Episode #20. In this case though, I followed the logic of the former much more than the latter. Watch the video below and see how.

I’ll not be exaggerating when I say that this was among the best and most unique rasams I’ve ever had. We had it with a Bengali rice called Malliphulio, and a raw banana poriyal on the side.

Heaven.

Pavazhamalli or Parijaat flower Rasam

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Ingredients

  

• A lime-sized ball of tamarind, deseeded
• ½ teaspoon turmeric powder
• Salt to taste
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 handful toor dal
• 3-4 dry red chillies
• 1 piece katti perungayam or whole dry hing/asafoetida
• 1 and ½ teaspoons rasam podi
• 1 tablespoon jaggery
• 2 tablespoons ghee
• 3-4 tablespoons dried pavazhamalli flowers

Instructions

 

To make the rasam:

• Set the tamarind, turmeric powder, and salt to boil in about ¾ to 1 liter water
• While that’s going, roast the dal, chillies, and hing in 1 tablespoon sesame oil until the dal turns fragrant and golden-brown
• Tip this into the simmering tamarind water
• Add the rasam powder and jaggery
• Simmer this mixture until the dals have cooked, the raw tamarind smell has dissipated, and the rasam is deepening in color.
• In 2 tablespoons ghee, fry the dried pavazhamalli or parijaat flowers gently until they are several shades darker—a minute or two will do. Take care not to let them burn.
• Pour this into the simmering rasam
• Serve hot with a nice soft table rice like thooyamalli or khichli samba

Video

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Notes

If you have extra dried flowers, save these and have them with plain hot rice and a little salt!

The rasavandi or heavier dal-chilli-flowers that settle at the bottom are great as accompaniments to curd-rice.